


Winterhawk Pieces

by rjn



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-08-09 20:55:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16457072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rjn/pseuds/rjn
Summary: Just a bunch of Winterhawk stuff that doesn't belong anywhere or make too much sense!





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

Bucky pushes a stainless steel mug into Clint’s hands. It’s not coffee and he only hopes he can be forgiven for that betrayal. It’s almost daybreak and Clint showed up at his door moments ago and muttered something about “just got off work” which Bucky knows not to ask about. Whatever “work” is for Clint these days is exhausting, and top secret, and seems to be taking an emotional toll. It’s not even the black shading under Clint’s eyes that triggers something ancient and protective in Bucky. It’s the tightness of his face, the set of his jaw. It’s a new squeamishness around violence that only Bucky is allowed to see. Nobody else at the tower has noticed Clint is a vegetarian now, and leaves the room when someone is eating red meat. Only Bucky sees the uncertainty that passes across Clint’s face when Steve and Tony announce a course of action for an Avengers call.

The tea is licorice root and spices and reminds Bucky a little of what rootbeer used to taste like in the 30s before everything was artificial flavoring and corn syrup. Clint seems content to use the mug as a handwarmer for now as he gets himself settled on Bucky’s couch. His hair is a little wet at the back of his neck where it’s grown out a bit too long and he smells delicious, like blackcurrant and nutmeg, and Bucky knows Clint uses the same exact bar soap for everything from washing his hair to shaving and that’s what he always smells like after a shower. Combined with the vapor coming out of the mug, Bucky just wants to bundle up the entire essence of Clint and take him away from here. Take him somewhere safe and calm and deserving of his soul. There’s an ease and an honesty to Clint away from work that Bucky worries might be too fragile to last.

Clint drinks some tea and sighs appreciatively. The crease that forms between his eyebrows is so brief that anyone but a trained sniper would have missed it.

“Oh my God. Buck. This is so good.”

The note of genuine surprise in his voice is completely disarming and Bucky laughs.

“No really, this is going on the list.”

It’s not quite loyalty, or not _just_ loyalty, but Clint finds specific things he loves, like that soap, or this tea, pizza parlours, craft beers, baseball players, a park bench, a t-shirt brand, songs, beaches, a particular city block, a painting he saw on a postcard he bought for a dime. He had a favorite shoe they stopped making and he wore his last pair until the hazmat team took them away.

“I’d love to see this list one day,” Bucky says. He posts up at one end of the couch and turns to open space for Clint, who shuffles down and leans into him.

“There’s not really…” Clint interrupts himself with a yawn so big it looks painful. Bucky reaches for the tea and takes the mug from him, setting it on the coffee table and drawing Clint into a slump against his chest.

“The list is just stuff that makes me feel…”

Clint tilts his head back to look into Bucky’s face, smiles dreamily, and closes his eyes.

Bucky presses his lips where he can manage at the angle they’re at.

“You’re my list too, buddy.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

It’s therapy, probably, letting Bucky run his own Ops teams, to have control over himself and others, to be able to select and shape his own battles, but it’s also prudent. Bucky may be tied with Steve for best tactician, but he surges ahead when it comes to stealth missions. His first pick for back-up is usually Steve anyways. Of course. End of the line and all that, and sometimes Black Widow because her fighting style compliments Bucky’s own like they were made for each other, which, who knows. But not all of their missions are silky maneuvers, and for a certain kind of op, there’s Clint Barton.

Barton, with his perpetually scuffed, but okay-good looks, is far more presentable as a dock worker, an oil rigger, an anonymous henchman. He’s an average enough size to be unremarkable, attractive enough to be generally likeable, grubby and dented enough to seem harmless. And Hawkeye knows how to have _fun_ on a mission, and not in the sly earth-scorching mirthful way Natasha has, nor the melancholy bonhomie of Steve. Sometimes maybe Bucky wants to celebrate a successful op with pizza and beers without Steve getting teary-eyed talking about old times. It’s not just banter, either, that being more of a prerequisite for Avengerdom than even a tragic backstory. If a guy only cared about banter, he’d try to work more with Stark, and Bucky doesn’t hate himself enough to subject himself to that. No. Hawkeye is all around reckless fun, like a kid riding a bike out of control down a too-steep hill, _look ma no hands_ , and shit, no brakes either.

So, yeah, missions with Barton are not always what Bucky would call flawless. Controlled chaos is okay for a lot of ops, though, and so what if Bucky lines up what he feels are easier jobs for the guy? It’s not because Clint is too human, too vulnerable apart from his formidable skills, appalling confidence, and genuine horseshoe-assed luck. It’s also because for half the missions, the guy’s face is perfect for sneaking around the sorts of business that become brawling level battles. And his specialty is long distance, so it’s not even Bucky that keeps him out of harm’s way the other half of missions, it’s circumstance. Not everyone is made for singlehandedly diverting nuclear warheads, though in some cases Bucky would give Barton a shot there, too. And if a mission is a cakewalk, why the heck not pick the guy who will make it the most fun?

Some missions need a lot of help to be fun. An unmanned Hydra weapons cache in fucking Siberia, because of course it’s in fucking Siberia, is about the most depressing target Bucky can think of, so Barton is his first pick before he’s even fleshed out the mission parameters. He regrets it pretty early on, because mentally, Clint is as bad as Steve about the cold, but far more prone to griping. There’s more talk about retiring than normal, which Bucky absolutely hates, because that’s right out of the stupid movies that Barton loves. The retiring guy gets his ticket punched in the second act, every time. Plus, there’s a sort of existential dread to the tone of Barton’s complaining this time, that grates on Bucky’s nerves enough that he snaps at Barton twice in the first few hours of the op.

But Barton is a trooper, mostly, and cheerful disaster that he is, he has Bucky laughing in near hysterics the first night when he flushes himself out of his own sniper nest with a miniature avalanche, triggered by Clint trying to warm his hands with parts from a flashbomb arrow.

And then the guy reveals that his worst circus-era scar is from an honest-to-God _Siberian_ tiger attack, and that sets off an entire morning of circus stories, which Bucky chooses to believe, about half the time.

(The rest of the time Bucky thinks the entire circus backstory is an elaborate joke. Although Tony has assured them all that he’s done background research on the guy and it’s all legit. And then also sometimes Barton sticks a landing with entirely too much flourish for someone without a performing arts background.)

On the third day of the mission, Clint is snowshoeing up to his sniper’s nest, spewing a running commentary for Bucky over the comms, semi-delirious sounding with boredom. Barnes, for his part, is still warm in their cabin hideout miles away. Once Barton is settled in to provide cover, Bucky’s job is to zip around in the sweet new Starktech snowmobile, scanning for the cache with a bunch of cool test gadgets. He feels a little bit guilty about the division of duties.

Barton is blathering on about something called Dog Cops, which Bucky has learned, over the last several missions, is a television reality show that Clint is watching. (Clint is at least two full seasons behind the newest Dog Cops episodes, and yet he still loses his shit when anyone talks about any aspect of the show without giving spoiler warnings.) He is describing some blooper from the show (after insisting that, yes, it is a reality show, and explaining that yes, reality shows can still have blooper reels) when he punctuates the end of his speech with a ridiculous cartoon sound. It surprises Bucky out of his ‘uh-huh’ response cycle.

“What the fuck was that?” he asks, because that sound was definitely not man-made.

“Slide! Whistle! Arrow!” crows Barton. “Tony made it for me. I don’t know what it’s for. Maybe it was a joke?” He does the slide whistle noise again.  “Yeah, it was a probably a joke.”

“Jesus Christ, Circus Boy. How hard was it, leaving that one in the quiver for this long?”

“It was so hard!”

Barton goes into his latest version of nonsense rambling, which he finds hilarious for some reason, where he repeats the same sentence over and over, dramatically emphasizing a different word with each refrain.

“ _IT_ was so hard. It _WAS_ so hard. It was _SOOO_ hard. It was so _HARRRD._ Whoa.” He pauses for a moment. “Getting myself turned on a bit, there.”

Bucky holds his arm up to his face and tries to smother his laugh in the sleeve of his parka.

“Are you almost set, Hawkeye?” he barks finally, trying to balance the tone of the mission somewhat by infusing it with his best drill sergeant voice.

“Yeah, yeah, I am in place. Standing by.”

Bucky fires up the eerily silent Starktech snowmobile and sets out towards the quadrant they are clearing today. It has the most promising scans, what looks like a perfect rectangle of lower density beneath rock and snow, it almost has to be a hollowed-out storage facility. Bucky is sort of glad they’re likely to wrap the mission up today. He’s feeling slightly guilty for dragging Barton along for such a lame op.

“Hey Barnes, let me know in advance if you’re going anywhere near sections 44 or 54 today.”

The Starktech Snomo is stealth quiet, but Barton speaks loudly over the comm, knowing the sound of the wind at speed is hard to overcome.

“Why’s that?”

“Dunno. The snow is… different? Maybe?”

“Is this just a feeling or a proper Hawkeye Twitch?”

Clint’s eyesight is so freakishly long-range that he occasionally sees things without knowing what he’s seeing, to the point where it’s like he has premonitions. They call it Hawkeye Twitch, because he can see a trigger finger twitch so early it’s like he can read the shooter’s nerves firing. Natasha swears he can shoot another guy’s bullet out of the sky based on the twitch, but Barton shrugs that kind of hyperbole off and it’s not like anyone else could ever see it happen.

“A feeling, I guess? I’ve been looking at too much snow lately, maybe.”

“I’ll go sweep those sections right now.”

It’s really not much effort if it will ease Clint’s mind slightly. Bucky heads straight for section 54 and with the absurd speed of the snowmachine, he’s there in minutes. The sections in question are close enough to Clint’s hiding spot that were he not so carefully whited out in camouflage, Bucky could just about see him and his stupid whistle arrow up on the hill.

Bucky starts a grid pattern, east to west clearing the two sections from the south.

“Slow down a second,” Clint breathes as Bucky is turning the machine for a fresh pass.

“You see something?”

“I don’t know. Can you just stop a second?”

Bucky is a little annoyed. Barton has been an exceedingly good sport, but ever since they got into the cold, he’s had these occasional bouts of anxiety. It was a sudden nervous chill that led to the hand-warming avalanche disaster a couple days ago.

“Let me finish this line and I’ll pause at the turn,” he says. By the time he gets back to the east side of the grid, he expects Barton will be over it.

“Bucky, stop!”

He can hear Clint is on the move, which is worrisome, but not as worrisome as it would be if he went into sniper mode stillness. It’s the _Bucky_ that alarms him most, because he is always Barnes to Hawkeye, and he cuts the throttle all the way down in an instant. He hears the start-up sound of their backup snow machine, up at Clint’s nest, but before he can question it, a fence of pointed steel rods blasts out of the ground, directly in front of Bucky, flipping his snowmobile before it can come to a complete stop.

Bucky manages to jump clear of the machinery and hit the ground running, or at least upright, which probably saves him, as he hears gunfire and bullets clanging off the Starktech Snomobile. Then an engine sound, because the back-up machine is not Starktech and it’s fucking _loud,_ so that it takes him a few seconds to realize Clint is yelling at him to take cover behind the overturned machine. Bucky is way ahead of him on that count, and he even manages to use his metal arm to lever the thing back onto its runners, but the brilliant toy is stalled out. Fortunately, in a spray of snow and roar of a traditional combustion engine, Clint drives the gas-powered snowmobile up behind him. Bucky runs for it and hops on.

They’re not in the clear by a long shot, even if nobody seems to be following, there’s still no cover from rifle fire, when the snowmobile stutters a little and slows dramatically. Bucky wishes they weren’t so near death by hail of gunfire, so that he could justifiably yell his head off at Barton for not filling the gas tank, but when he reaches his arms forward, he realizes they’re not out of gas. Clint’s hand has slipped, fumbling around ineffectually near the throttle.

Bucky lunges ahead further and takes over the controls. His glove slides against what he’s sure would turn out to be Clint’s blood, if he took the time to look, but he just guns the engine harder. The blood will be solid in minutes, and he’d like to get back to their base before whatever part of Clint is leaking is also frozen.

“You with me, Hawkeye?”

Clint’s throttle hand is now tucked in front of his body and he’s slumped forward, but his other hand is still on its grip, shifted down to the end so Bucky can handle brakes and steering.

“I mean, I’m rescuing you. So, obviously.”

Bucky tries to ignore the strain in Clint’s voice.

“Well thanks for that,” he says.

It’s even less funny a few minutes later when Barton slumps further down and Bucky has to redistribute their weight so his self-declared rescuer doesn’t tumble off the snowmobile.

“Talk to me, Barton. You get shot back there? Don’t tell me you stabbed yourself with the slidewhistle thing by accident.”

“A little bit. A bit shot, yeah.”

Bucky can barely hear Clint’s weakening voice over the comms, and not at all from in front of him on the machine.

“Is it bad?”

There’s no answer, and a moment later Clint’s other hand slips. There’s not much Bucky can do about it, because if they don’t make it to their base, they’ll be easily tracked on their noisy, normal-speed snowmachine and be sitting ducks when the gas actually does run out. Bucky keeps headbutting Barton, trying to see where he’s going, and he’s thankful the guy had at least taken the time to put on his helmet before ripping off into the barrage of snow and bullets.

“Barton. I could use a little…”

Clint gasps and goes slack. Bucky isn’t sure if he hears it in his earpiece or feels it against his chest. Bucky lifts one hand off the grips and reaches up around Clint’s helmet, looking for a spot he can get his fingers in to feel for his neck, warmth, a pulse, anything, but it’s awkward enough already, backseat driving. He’ll have to wait and see. He drives as fast as he can.


End file.
